
The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to Cart failed.
Please try again later
Add to Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Please try again
Unfollow podcast failed
Please try again
LIMITED TIME OFFER
3 months free
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Buy for $16.61
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
-
Narrated by:
-
Mark Kurlansky
-
By:
-
Mark Kurlansky
National Outdoor Book Award Winner for Outdoor Literature
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Cod—the irresistible story of the science, history, art, and culture of the least efficient way to catch a fish.
Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish—and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets—salmon, trout, and char; and for some, bass, tarpon, tuna, bonefish, and even marlin—are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals. The cast as well is a matter of grace and rhythm, with different casts and rods yielding varying results.
Kurlansky is known for his deep dives into the history of specific subjects, from cod to oysters to salt. But he spent his boyhood days on the shore of a shallow pond. Here, where tiny fish weaved under a rocky waterfall, he first tied string to a branch, dangled a worm into the water, and unleashed his passion for fishing. Since then, a lifelong love of the sport has led him around the world to many countries, coasts, and rivers—from the wilds of Alaska to Basque country, from the Catskills in New York to Oregon's Columbia River, from Ireland and Norway to Russia and Japan. And, in true Kurlansky fashion, he absorbed every fact, detail, and anecdote along the way.
The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing marries Kurlansky's signature wide-ranging reach with a subject that has captivated him for a lifetime—combining history, craft, and personal memoir to show readers, devotees of the sport or not, the necessity of experiencing nature’s balm first-hand.©2021 Mark Kurlansky (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Listeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...



Narrator weak . Hard to understand
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The audio quality
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wait for a better narration of this book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Awesome content and exactly what I was expecting
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Other Kurlansky books are among my absolute favorites, listened to over and over. Salt, Cod, and The Big Oyster are on my list of comfort books I can return to in times of need. Unfortunately, I don't see this one joining the list.
As a book, it's not that bad. I enjoyed most of the content, and I learned a lot more about fly fishing than I ever expected.
And even the performance isn't all bad, though he does sometimes sound rushed, like he's running out of breath and wants to finish a sentence before he passes out. I can ignore the tinny sound after a moment or two.
The real problem here is the editing, or lack thereof. Many times there are multiple takes of sentences repeated. Every narrator makes flubs. That's no big deal. But they're supposed to be removed from the final cut, and when they aren't, it takes us listeners our of the river and reminds us that we're listening to a book, not sharing a fly fishing experience.
That said, I had to laugh and felt camaraderie with Kurlansky toward the end when he took several tries to pronounce the name of a river in Maine and immediately joked about it.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who isn't a Kurlansky fan already or a dedicated fly fisher.
It isn't Salt, so take this one with a grain of it
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Needs editing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Buy the book, not the audio book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent book, Terrible Audiobook
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
reader sounds like he's dying
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good story, horrible performance
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.